III
The police dragnet for the slayer of Cardello was far flung, and zest was added to the man hunt by the offer of $1,000 reward. Throughout the Italian quarter, Basco spread the story of Guisseppi’s recrudescence and his ghostly revenge.
The superstitious residents accepted the weird tale with simple faith. Fear of the phantom became rife. Children remained indoors after dark. Pedestrians quickened their pace when passing lonely spots at night. Turning a corner suddenly, they half-expected to come face to face with Guisseppi’s ghost, wry-necked from the hangman’s noose.
Policeman Rafferty, traveling beat in the neighborhood of Death Corners, was told time and again that Guisseppi’s ghost had murdered Cardello. Yes, it was true. Basco had seen the phantom. Others in the colony had seen it slipping like a shadow through some deserted street at night. There was no doubt that Guisseppi had come back from the dead.
Policeman Rafferty laughed. When had ghosts started in bumping off live folks? That was what he would like to know. How could the poor simpletons believe such stuff? Funny lot of jobbies, these dagoes!
But when Policeman Rafferty had heard the story of Guisseppi’s ghost for the thousandth time, he scratched his head and did a little thinking, not forgetting the $1,000 reward. Guisseppi was dead. Of course. He had been hanged, and the newspapers had been full of the stories of his execution. So Guisseppi couldn’t have killed Cardello. That was out of the question. But could it be possible that dead Guisseppi had a living double? Hah!
Policeman Rafferty got in touch with his favorite stool-pigeon without delay. Shortly thereafter, that worthy laid before him a piece of information which Policeman Rafferty was welcome to for just what it was worth and no more. Guisseppi’s ghost had been seen oftenest in the immediate neighborhood of Guisseppi’s father’s residence. If the fool copper thought he could put a pinch over on a ghost, he might do well to search Guisseppi’s old home.
So Policeman Rafferty eased himself one day through a narrow passageway, burst in suddenly at the kitchen door and started to search the premises.
He found Guisseppi whiffing a cigaret in a front room.
“Yes, I killed Cardello,” said Guisseppi quietly. “I’ll go with you.”
“But who are you?” asked the policeman. “You can’t be Guisseppi. They topped that boy on the gallows.”
“I’m Guisseppi, all right. They brought me back to life with a pulmotor.”
Policeman Rafferty’s jaw dropped.
“Back to life?”
“Yes. I was as dead as stone. I was gone absolutely for an hour.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere. I remember standing on the trap. Then it seemed I was falling for a long time, falling—from a star—or a high mountain top—through miles of emptiness into midnight blackness. There wasn’t any pain. I seemed to land on a deep soft cushion of feathers. I could feel the darkness. It seemed to whirl and billow round me. I couldn’t see myself—or feel myself. But I knew, somehow, I was there in the heart of the darkness. I suddenly found myself on a broad road stretching away into night.”
“Must ha’ been the road to hell,” remarked Policeman Rafferty.
“Maybe so. Along this road, I glided with the swiftness of a bird on the wing. I didn’t know where I was going—”
“You were bound for hell,” said Rafferty.
“I heard music away off in the dark; wonderful orchestra music, violins, ’cellos, wind pipes. It grew louder. I never heard such beautiful music. Through the solid blackness ahead, I saw a great mountain peak standing up, red and shining, against the sky.
“Around me came a glare of bright lights. I was blinded by streaks and splashes of color, darting, rolling, weaving into each other, changing all the time. Reds, purples, greens, blues, rolled over me in great, flashing waves. Flaring colors swirled around me in blazing whirlwinds. I was drowned in gorgeousness. It was as if a cyclone had wrecked a thousand rainbows and buried me beneath their ruins.”
“What were these lights?”
“Search me. I don’t know. I heard a loud, clear call out of the distance. I pushed through the storm of colors. Across a dark plain, I reached the shining, red mountain. I climbed up until I stood on the peak. I felt fine. Something struck me as a joke. I began laughing. Then, bending close above me, I saw the faces of my mother and father and the doctors.”
“Well, Guisseppi,” said Policeman Rafferty, “gettin’ hung once would ha’ been an elegant sufficiency for most men. They’d be leery about takin’ a second chance. You must be stuck on dropping through a trap—eh?”
“Yes, they’ll hang me again, all right. That’s a cinch. You might think me a fool for walking with my eyes open right into this second scrape—”
“A hog,” corrected Rafferty.
“I don’t know. I came back from the dead to kill Cardello. And I killed him. I hated that fellow. I’d like to have tortured the life out of him, killed him by inches. His cries of agony would have been wine to me. It’s hell to be hanged. I ought to know. But I can go back to the gallows now with a light heart. I got Cardello, and I’m ready to take my medicine.”
Policeman Rafferty bit a generous chew from his plug of tobacco.
“You Eye-talians,” he remarked reflectively, “are a nutty bunch.”